Setting the Rainbow Free.....

Well, if you look at yesterdays's blog you will see that I have cheated and not managed to leave the fabrics in the procion dyes for 48 hours. Oh dear! The jar started to look like it was getting muddy and I was worried I would end up with brown colurs so I whipped it out after 12 hours and was pleased to see the result. It is one long continuous piece of cloth which I have pleated here for the photo. Here is a link to another fabric dyeing book

I did manage to leave this for 48 hours and it has turned out quite well. I will have fun printing onto it or using it at next week's class when we do some batik

I was really pleased with this matching space dyed tape. I bought reels and reels of white tape many years ago at a car boot sale....the sort of thing you buy because it might come in useful one day! I like to use the computer to print onto it for my scrapbooking pages, particularly the wider size. I was hoping to put my instructions for printing onto tape here but cant find them yet!
Will update if I do

Deep inside the rainbow.....

Week 2 at Cottenham Village College with Rikki Outis...

Having handed in my notice on Monday and feeling (and behaving) like a rain cloud since then it was blissful to go and enjoy being a teeny bit creative this morning. I was functioning in second gear....not my usual 5th gear and overdrive

We were busy space dyeing fabrics this moring. I love this techinque and have not done it this way before. We pre-soaked our fabrics in soda ash solution for 10 minutes and then poured a little procion dye into the bottom of a plastic cup. (See my previous blog entry for the proportions of dye) I didn't have a plastic cup luckily, so I had to use a glass jam jar which is great as you can see inside it.

I had set out the dyes in a circle and kept them in order. I started with a green dye and then pressed some of the wet fabric onto the dye and then added a little of the next colour, which was a different shade of green. Next came more fabric and a blue then further fabric and a bluish mauve colour.

I carried on around the 12 colours adding dye and fabric and topped it off with yellow.

Now then....I am going to do something UNHEARD OF FOR ME!!!! I am going to leave it for 48 hours if I can (want to take bets on this to see if I will?)

I might bottle out if it looks like it is going to turn to MUD!

Oh what a delightful mess!


I finished off this morning playing at painting dye onto soda treated fabric. I love the effect this sponge roller gave (from The Range cost about £1.00 intended for children but as I'm never going to grow up I count myself in there!)

I am SO looking forward to unwarpping and sharing the end results with you but in the meantime I am going to start thinknig about making a piece of work using words that Hope (7) sang to me on Sunday morning when she and her sister gave a little impromptu performance. Hope wore Grace's nightie and Grace wore her Christmas Angel outfit and played (well....she pretended to play) the guitar....!



Hope sang "Deep inside the rainbow I see you (in my heart)"

"Behind my eyes I see you in the flowerdust"

Then there was another delightfully random bit of singing "I see my house floating in the chimney pots"

WOW!

I grabbed pen and paper as she sang and floated about in her uninhibited way and also managed to get some video of her singing too.

What brilliant inspiration for a piece of work. I hope to get working on it very soon. I love to make something tangible from things they have drawn and this is the first time I have felt I could do something with words. Maybe I shall incorporate them into a piece using inspiration from their drawings last week.

I hope tomorrow I shall start feeling better.

PS: I think that my bottle of space dyed fabric could be the background....it looks like a rainbow in a jar... :)